A Freedman's Moral Intuition

In 1865, a former slave owner mailed a job offer to one of his former slaves. Here's the highlight of the freedman's response:

Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you
were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to
test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we
served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on
your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for
thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month
for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to
eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest
for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid
for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth
for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.
Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq.,
Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we
can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good
Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have
done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations
without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in
Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for
the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those
who defraud the laborer of his hire.

Since this letter was written a hundred years before the existence of the Department of Education, this man ought to have the common decency to his future union brothers to be ignorant. Alas, the quality of his prose shows that former slaves received better education than 90% of high school children today.

@AJ,
The average person in America, descendant of slave or not, doesn’t write or think like that. I think, though, that the average person could write and think like that. He/she would “just" have to get a good education. Not schooling. A good education.

@Thomas Boyle writes:
"But... it's also an example of the sunk cost fallacy."

I don't see any references to sunk costs. The former slave simply wishes assurances that he will be treated fairly in the future. Since he doesn't trust a contract to do that, he is asking his potential employer to prove his good-faith by sending him compensation for 30-or-so years of forced labor. I'd say it's a signal with a very low false positive rate. If the potential employer sends that much money, he probably isn't doing it out of self-interest (he can probably hire someone for much cheaper) and instead is showing true repentance for his past actions which could lead one to conclude that he will act appropriately in the future. Of course, there is also a high false negative rate. But then again, I would also be willing to accept a high false-negative rate if I feared being enslaved.

It seems that every couple of years this letter goes viral again. According to Snopes, it was first printed in newspapers in the 1860s and was published in an anthology of Freedman writings in the 1930s.

The slave who "wrote" it and the master he sent it to were both real people, but the slave was illiterate and dictated it to someone who could write.

Does it belong in the category of "Abolitionist Propaganda"? Of course. Is it essentially true? More than likely. Does Bryan miss the point of the last sentence? Absolutely. Our good negro and his ghostwriter both understood very clearly that the "day of reckoning" would not happen under the sun we mortals see.

As for DRH's good observation, "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous." - Edward Gibbon

The use of the semi-colon is perfect. This would be suspicious but for the claim that the letter was dictated. The intervention of a skilled writter would transform structure and pauses to punctuation correctly.
Boing Boing links to a scan of the 1865 newspaper with the letter. This seems to me the best evidence it's a fake!

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